This week I have to steer away from my lighthearted columns, which I write purposefully. I know that everyone is tired of reading the word COVID everywhere you look, trust me, I am too. But, this week, I feel I need to share.
I was not unaware of the seriousness of COVID, but the severity only really hit me after I said the words, “my family really hasn’t been majorly affected by COVID.” I should have knocked on wood because not even two hours later I got a call that completely changed my view on COVID.
“Your dad has a major blood clot in his leg and smaller ones in his lungs,” my mother told me over a phone call.
This diagnosis came after he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and pneumonia a few months earlier. He would be put on blood thinners for the next six months, my mom told me.
Exactly one week later I got another message.
“Hey kid. Sounds like we are going to Norfolk with your dad. He’s got fluid in his right lung and some bleeding that they want to drain,” my mom’s message read.
We are lucky this was all caught in time but doesn’t make it any easier. Fortunately, I was able to sneak away from Crete to go see him last week, but when I walked in I was face-to-face with something I never thought I would see – my dad in pain.
Let me put this in perspective. My dad is the kind of man who can almost cut his finger off, duct tape it together and keep working. He was back to carrying in wood the day after he was diagnosed with pneumonia. This man avoids the doctor like the plague, no pun intended.
It wasn’t until I was sitting with him after he got his second chest tube put in that it really hit me, and I think that is how a lot of people are. They know it’s bad but it hasn’t impacted them close enough to really understand. While he is doing better now, there was always the chance he wouldn’t and that’s incredibly scary.
COVID is more than losing smell and taste. It affects people differently, but for some it really takes a toll, sometimes even a life. It’s not just COVID and done, sometimes it causes a ball to roll of medical complications.
COVID doesn’t just impact that singular person. It impacts the wife who takes off work to stay in the hospital. It impacts the son who has to take care of the house while the parents are gone. It impacts the daughter who has to take off work to help her brother. It impacts the employers who are missing those employees.
I won’t be naïve enough to think everyone who reads this will now take extra precautions because of this column, but I hope it shares the message that this is real and important.
Please continue to wear your mask and listen to the medical staff who are seeing this each and every day.
